Fear of Change can Hurt Your Business

Most people don’t like change.  It means having to re-adjust routine, change habits and throw your order of process into upheaval.  You are leaving your comfort zone.  Most people don’t want to do this, so those people fail.  Even when that change could mean something GOOD people balk. 

Internet marketing is no different.  You get used to doing something one way, you use the same ad sources for your marketing, you go after promoting the same products, and your web pages even start looking the same.  I have heard this saying from just about every successful business person I know:

If you keep doing what you’re doing . . . you’re going to keep getting what you’re getting.

When my income, my web site’s activity (visitors) and my fulfillment hit a plateau and I wasn’t at my goal, I knew I had to do something different.  I totally believed in what I was doing, I enjoyed it, but it became routine.  When that happens a complacency takes effect and it’s picked up in your written content, your follow ups, and even phone communication with your customers.

Somehow, you realize that you have gotten away from your purpose, but you are doing everything you know to do, and nothing new and exciting is happening.  This also happens when you TRY to do something different, but slide back into the same habits and routines because they are COMFORTABLE.  Even seasoned internet marketers run into these roadblocks.

When I began working on Single-Parents-Help.com, I was excited.  It wasn’t because I saw all this potential money in it, because the site really wasn’t about income.  The subject matter of that site was something I was passionate about because its focus was on helping people that felt they couldn’t help themselves. 

I began working on the site, but I was getting lost.  I had to stop and take a step back.

It was starting to look and read like an internet marketing site.  It looked good, but it was not appealing at all to single parents who would come looking for help and support.  It looked like I expected them to BUY something!

So I scrapped it.  I went to visit various single parent support sites, like parentswithoutpartners.org, and single.parents.about.com.  As a relatively new single parent myself, what would I look for if I went online looking for help or direction?

That’s when I felt it.  And that’s when I began re-writing content.  I took the focus off attracting sales (which was evident all through my text), and instead stressed the position single parents found themselves in, and how to get out of the rut.  I wrote from a single parent’s point-of-view, not from a marketer’s point of view.  Then I realized something!

I REALLY DID want to help people!  I had been there!  These people weren’t looking for money!  (Well, not JUST money).  They wanted someone to understand!

In getting down to communicating, you sometimes have to insert a personal empathy for the situation your target visitors are experiencing.  I knew what it was like to have a car repossessed.  I knew what it was like to have to ask to borrow money to pay bills, yes!  I was an internet marketer, I was successful and made five figures in sales and went down to nothing over a period of three years because my routine changed.  I no longer had a home.  My family was breaking up and my kids were hurting . . . we no longer had health insurance.  My whole security was gone!  I came THIS CLOSE to falling apart.

That’s what most single parents deal with on a day to day basis and this was HARD for me to write about.  I had to leave my comfort zone and talk about things I don’t talk about. (You don’t talk about personal tragedies on a website about making money!)

Now even though this is a rather extreme example of fear of change, but it was an eye-opener and a wake-up call.

When your main focus is on obtaining sales, it’s going to be evident in your web content, your newsletters, your follow up emails, etc, etc.  Take a step back and look at what you are doing.

What are you offering people?  What will spending money at your site help them with?

Now take the last part of that last sentence.  That should be your focus . . . What are you going to help them with?

If you change your action sentences from “You need to buy . . .” to “You will have . . .” you will not only see a jump in interest to your site, you will begin to see longer visits, more newsletter subscribers, and more people linking to your web page.

Give a little something.  You don’t want to just take money from people, there’s no fulfillment in that.  You want people coming back because they believe you.  They trust you.  Make them feel good about purchasing from your site.  The more you give, the more you will get in return and the more fulfillment your business will give you.